On the morning of 1 March 1973, Ambassador Cleo Noel Jr., who had been sent to Sudan on an interim basis, was sworn in by his outgoing Charge d’Affaires, George Curtis Moore. Their wives attended the ceremony and were ‘wrapped in laughter and friendship’. Moore had also left a handwritten welcome letter for his replacement, Robert E. Fritts, which concluded with: So at the close of three and one-half of the finest years of my life, I welcome you to Khartoum and hope you will be able to make the same statement when you leave. Tragically for Moore, the day he swore in Noel would be his last before their brutal murders the following day. Had Fritts arrived any earlier, he too would probably have been a victim. 1 March 1973 would mark one of the most tragic events in the history of the American Foreign Service.

That evening, Moore was scheduled to attend a farewell reception hosted by Abdullah al-Malhouk, the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Khartoum. Ambassador Noel Jnr decided to participate as a courtesy. All was going well until about 7:00 pm, when the party ended. At that point, eight heavily armed Palestinians from the Black September extremist organisation burst in and seized Moore, along with Noel and Guy Eid, the Belgian chargé d’affaires. They were then beaten and tied up.

This was the trigger the terrorists needed, and as one would expect today, they proceeded to shoot and kill the hostages. George Thompson, an American spokesman, quoted witnesses as having said that Moore’s body bore signs of kicking and of pistol‐whipping and that it had multiple bullet wounds.’ That officials had found ‘spent shells scattered on the floor and a wristwatch that belonged to one of the slain.’ While Carol Roehl, another Embassy official who had identified the bodies, said, “They were almost unrecognisable,”